Heatsink Testing

During development of the Rubicon enclosure for the Raspberry Pi, we noticed a significant need for thermal management. Almost every weatherproof enclosure suffers from the same problem – trapping in heat, which can damage the electronics inside the enclosure.

Thermal issues make a lot of sense within the context of market forces. Everyone wants a cheap weatherproof enclosure, so most enclosures are made of plastic. Plastic does a great job at keeping water and dust out, but isolates purely against heat. When we set out on designing the Rubicon, we wanted to make an enclosure that does its best to solve common enclosure problems even if the raw cost of materials was higher. Thus, we came up with the ability to thermally tie the electronics inside the box to a metallic exterior of the box in order to provide a path for the heat to flow from the silicon to ambient.

And – as promised previously, we’re providing our test results! You can find the whitepaper here. We put the heatsink accessory in a side-by-side comparison test inside the Rubicon, and the results showed a whopping 20°C difference!

We’ve edited a time-lapse video that shows our tests in action. You can also subscribe to our mailing list below to get an update when we release new accessories for the Rubicon.